


would rather eat than starve, would rather kiss you hard

by akisazame



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: 3x11, Birthday, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gap Filler, Missing Scene, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Tension: The Fic, Unresolved Sexual Tension, horny angry tango minus the tango, implied Resolved Sexual Tension, seductive cake eating, some people engage in light stalking to Cope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 16:14:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18502486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisazame/pseuds/akisazame
Summary: Rebecca and Nathaniel aren't dating. He's not obligated to keep his calendar free for Rebecca's life events. The only reason it stings is becauseshedoesn't have any plans. Not unilaterally, of course, but the gurl group had to postpone until Sunday because of Paula's law school classes and Heather's work schedule and some dumb party Valencia is getting paid to plan and it's fine, it'sfine,Rebecca is an adult who doesn't need to celebrate birthdays day-of anymore. She's grown up and mature and sophisticated.(Rebecca's birthday, in the eight month timeskip.)





	would rather eat than starve, would rather kiss you hard

**Author's Note:**

> happy within-the-stated-range-of-your-birthday, Rebecca Bunch! sorry about... this
> 
> thanks to [luzial](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luzial) for not only being a good sport when I slid into her DMs asking for plausible forced proximity situations for lawyers, but then providing me the framework for an entire goddamn case. get you a friend who goes above and beyond for a fandom she's not even in. (any legal errors are entirely mine.) also thanks to [crushinator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crushinator) for instantly providing an entire list of fancy restaurants in Los Angeles County at the drop of a hat (and, while we're here, for housing me when I visited for the cxgf concert taping; without you I wouldn't be the extremely cool and very humble television star I am now). also also thanks to [the_northerlies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_northerlies) and [DaxAeterna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaxAeterna) for beta reading, and for help with that one thing and that other thing.
> 
> title from "Hard to Believe" by Charly Bliss, which is, [hand to god](https://twitter.com/charlybliss/status/1115993649593159681), "a song about being addicted to a bad relationship, and the endless cycle of trying and failing to end one." #humbleandblessed

For the first time since Rebecca moved to West Covina, the snooping is an accident.

At the very least, she doesn't look at Nathaniel's laptop screen, which he had clearly left open on his desk in a very enticing manner, with the intention of seeing his calendar. She doesn't look at it with the intention of seeing _anything._ But he'd made a frustrated noise when he got off the phone, pushing his chair back to angrily rattle against the cabinets and storming out of their office without bothering to close the door again behind him, and she's pretty sure his mood stemmed from the phone call but there could have been a visual component involved, and if she goes to talk to him about it then there's a pretty high chance they'll just end up sprawled out on the supply closet floor and she's _trying_ to be better about office supplies. So instead of slinking out of their office to retrieve yet another pad of post-its to add to the growing stack in the back of her drawer, she gets up and casually circles their desks. Just a little fact finding mission. Sweeping the field for landmines.

To her credit, the topic of Nathaniel's heated phone discussion is actually on the calendar: a client meeting with Country Market and the man whose land they're buying for an expansion of their parking lot, which has been rescheduled so many times that both Nathaniel and Rebecca think that one of the parties involved has something shady to hide. But that isn't what Rebecca sees first. Instead, her gaze drifts to Friday, to a box that's highlighted orange, standing out from the spectrum of blues and greys on the rest of the screen. Nathaniel's personal calendar. A dinner date with Mona.

A dinner date with Mona on Rebecca's birthday.

It's fine, she tells herself, even as her vision blurs without her consent. Rebecca and Nathaniel aren't dating. He's not obligated to keep his calendar free for Rebecca's life events. The only reason it stings is because _she_ doesn't have any plans. Not unilaterally, of course, but the gurl group had to postpone until Sunday because of Paula's law school classes and Heather's work schedule and some dumb party Valencia is getting paid to plan and it's fine, it's _fine,_ Rebecca is an adult who doesn't need to celebrate birthdays day-of anymore. She's grown up and mature and sophisticated. Even if she were throwing a party, it's not as though she would have invited Nathaniel. He's not her boyfriend, because he's someone else's boyfriend. She's not sure she'd even call them friends, because she'd have to tack With Benefits on the end and they are _definitely_ not that, because the benefits are over. Done. Revoked.

"Ummmm," comes Maya's voice from the doorway, and Rebecca startles, slamming Nathaniel's laptop lid closed and jumping away like she's been burned.

"I wasn't doing anything," Rebecca says automatically.

"Uh, okay." Maya pushes her glasses up her nose and rocks up onto the balls of her feet. "I was looking for Nathaniel, actually. He has a—"

"Just missed him!" Rebecca interrupts, banging her knee against the side of the desk in her haste to circle back around to her own side. The safe side. "You know how he gets, with those angry man moods. Very threatening and, uh... masculine. I'll find him for you. Safer that way." She practically shoves Maya out of the way as she barrels through the door, making a beeline through the bullpen.

In a small voice in the distance, Rebecca thinks she hears, "But I didn't tell you what..."

There are other, more logical places in the office to look for Nathaniel. The break room. The conference room. The bathroom. But Rebecca goes straight for the supply closet and there he is by the far wall, back turned, his frustration making his whole body taut. She doesn't even have time to feel like a hypocrite before she's locking the door and launching herself at him, spinning him around and pressing him back against the shelves.

"I didn't think you—"

"Shut up," she growls, hitching her knee over his hip and throwing both arms around his neck so she can drag him down to her level, biting down hard on his lower lip. It might leave a mark but she doesn't care; she _wants_ to leave a mark on him, somewhere, anywhere, some tangible evidence of their inability to move on. Her initial reaction when she saw Mona's name on Rebecca's day in Nathaniel's calendar might've been closer to regret but now she's just angry, a little at him but mostly at herself, and then angry at herself again for being angry in the first place. _Shame spiral,_ says a voice in her head that sounds like Dr. Shin but she's angry at that too, because doctors only ever want her to not feel things but sometimes feeling things is the only way she knows she's alive.

They get a little more naked than they usually do, their frustrations feeding into each other, creating a feedback loop; she strips all the layers of clothing off the top half of his body so she can claw at his bare skin, and he unbuttons her shirt and unhooks the bra beneath, leaving everything awkwardly dangling from her shoulders but she doesn't care, can't care when his mouth is on her breast, teeth leaving furrows. The shelves rattle as she plants a foot on one, climbing up his body for better leverage; he bunches her skirt around her waist and she pushes his slacks halfway down his thighs and she wonders how she manages to keep convincing herself that she doesn't need this.

It never lasts long when they're like this, their emotions about something external bleeding into every movement; she drops back down to the ground and walks away from him as soon as they're done, retreating into a corner to reclasp her bra and button up her shirt.

"This is the last time," Nathaniel says, perfunctory, because one of them has to.

The oxytocin isn't doing its job, because despite her breathlessness and the weakness in her knees, Rebecca is still mostly furious. She looks down at her shaking hands to find that her shirt buttons are askew, and she huffs out a frustrated breath as she starts to undo them again.

There's a tentative pat on her shoulder and Rebecca whirls to face Nathaniel, glaring up at him so ferociously that he staggers backwards, surprised. Good. "D- do you need some help with that?" he stammers, gesturing at the line of mismatched buttonholes.

If this thing between them were different, she might find his offer sweet. She'd laugh and bump her forehead against his arm affectionately as he carefully buttoned her back up, undoing the mess she made, and they'd probably kiss, slow and gentle, saying more with the press of their lips then they've ever, ever managed to say with their voices. But this thing isn't that kind of thing. It could've been that kind of thing, almost _was_ that kind of thing, except Rebecca won't let herself have that kind of thing. That kind of thing is the kind of thing she ruins.

"Just go," she says. "You've been gone longer. Better if you leave first."

And of course, of _course_ Nathaniel hesitates, his teeth worrying over his bottom lip. She looks for any evidence left by her own teeth, but she doesn't find it. "So, I know why I'm mad, but I don't—"

"So, generally," she cuts in, waving her hand at him, "when someone says to go, you shouldn't try to like, strike up a friendly conversation. You should just fucking _go._ "

He clearly wants to retort, to argue with her about it, and part of her kind of wants that, the chance to rip into him with metaphorical teeth in addition to her physical ones. Maybe she could leave a mark on him that way. She's ready for it, the rage simmering under her skin, but he doesn't rise to her bait. "Fine," he says, the word snapping from his mouth and then he's turning, leaving, out the door and gone.

Rebecca sags back against the shelves, metal digging into her back, as she methodically refastens her shirt, one tiny button at a time.

-

She tries to not think about it, that clearly delineated orange rectangle on Nathaniel's calendar, standing out from all the work-related ones both because of its color and the way it unequivocally has nothing at all to do with her. Maybe Nathaniel hadn't known the significance of the date; she'd given him the range, during their after-hours elevator heart-to-heart, but she'd never gotten more specific than that. Never had reason to, since they'd broken up before it would've been relevant.

No, not since _they'd_ broken up. Since _she'd_ broken them up. It was all on her. He hadn't asked for it, and then he'd moved on, and why shouldn't he? Why shouldn't he get to do the real thing, the true thing, with someone who's not fundamentally broken?

Would she still be obsessing over this if she hadn't blithely chosen to share an office with Nathaniel, if she hadn't settled on this specific method of punishing herself? She certainly wouldn't have been forced to spend nearly an entire week staring at the back of his laptop, imagining that single brightly colored rectangle on the other side. She's barely spoken to him in the three days since she saw that damn rectangle, keeping her side of their work conversations brisk and clipped, ignoring all his dropped hints about highlighters and legal pads and sticker thingies. If her behavior bothers him, he doesn't show it, but it's definitely having a negative effect on the general mood in their shared space.

In a perfect world, she thinks, she would be spending her birthday doing as little work as possible. Maybe she would have treated herself to a spa day. Or maybe, she thinks with a twinge, she'd still be with Nathaniel, properly _with_ him, and he would have whisked her away to Rome or the Bahamas or, god, even Raging Waters. Instead she's at work, wearing a holographic party hat that Darryl had cheerfully rubber banded to her head as soon as she'd stepped off the elevator, trapped in her office with Nathaniel working on the case for Country Market.

"It's not acceptable," Nathaniel is saying, his fingers angrily flying over his keyboard. Rebecca leans back in her chair and rubs her temples with both hands. They spent over an hour on a conference call and their post-call debrief has consisted of the two of them talking in circles for the past twenty-five minutes and all Rebecca can think about is how the clock in the upper right corner of her laptop screen is crawling ever closer to the time indicated on that goddamn orange rectangle on Nathaniel's. "The demolition is scheduled for Monday. We can't get a quit claim deed by Monday. If we needed one, we needed to file for it six weeks ago, at least."

Rebecca presses her fingernails into her scalp, as though she can bleed off some of her irritation that way. "I don't know how many times you're going to make me say that Matthew's deed is perfectly serviceable."

"It _was_ perfectly serviceable until we found out that Matthew's mother didn't have a death certificate," Nathaniel snaps back, "and if she wasn't dead, then she or her heirs have claim to that land Country Market wants to pave over. Surely you see the issue here."

Rebecca tilts her head back for emphasis as she rolls her eyes at him. "Why don't you explain it to me a fifth time, Stanford, since you seem to think I'm so slow on the uptake."

"Don't be flippant," Nathaniel scoffs.

"I'm just wondering when you got to be so by-the-book. Did getting sued for manipulating a transaction to gain a jurisdictional advantage put the fear of Lady Justice in you? Imagine, if you'd been such a goody-two-shoes all along, you wouldn't be stuck here with me in this office..." She trails off when she notices the intense way he's glaring at her, and she hates the way it pulses through her like a shockwave. She's still furious at him, for both the argument they're currently having and the orange rectangle situation that he isn't even aware is a situation, but the unfortunate side effect of spending a whole week being aloof and untouchable is that now she wants to be touched very, very much, and it only gets worse with each second she's forced to sit in this office with him. Nathaniel isn't doing much better, if the look on his face is anything to go by. Pavlov, eat your heart out.

She feels vicious and vindictive and a little bit self-destructive, so she swipes her finger through the frosting on the slice of Costco sheet cake that she's been picking at since lunch and brings it to her mouth. "Unless you'd _rather_ be spending your Friday afternoon watching me eat this sugary birthday confection," she teases before swirling her tongue around her finger.

Nathaniel huffs out a frustrated breath, but Rebecca doesn't miss the way his gaze flickers and catches when she pops her finger into her mouth. "When you're done," he says, making a dismissive gesture at her cake plate, as though that will distract her from the choked sound in his voice.

She decides to call his bluff and picks up her fork to take a slightly-too-large bite of cake, staring directly into his eyes as she does. It's worth it for the look on his face when he finally has to break eye contact, pushing his chair back and spinning it sideways. "So," she says, voice pitched low, "you were saying? About Matthew's deed?"

He doesn't respond for a moment, and Rebecca puts one elbow on her desk and rests her chin on her hand, waiting. Nathaniel either lost the ability to conjure a poker face or Rebecca learned to see right through it at some point between the day they met and now, and she watches the minuscule changes in his expression as he wars with his own self-control. She takes another bite of cake at the same moment he finally turns back to her and says, casual as can be, "Paper clips?"

Rebecca doesn't get a chance to respond before Nathaniel's phone buzzes on the desk, the screen lighting up with Mona's name. The cake turns sour in Rebecca's mouth.

 _Don't you have somewhere you have to be?_ she wants to say, the words petulant and bitter on her tongue, but it's so much easier to lie. "Actually, I have somewhere to be," she says, scrambling to her feet and barely remembering to grab her handbag as she hurries out the door. She thinks Nathaniel is saying something to her but she tunes it out, tunes out everything as she marches through the bullpen, stopping in front of the elevator before she thinks better of it and takes the stairs instead.

She drives all the way home with her parting shot to Nathaniel circling like a shark in her brain, but it isn't until she walks into her empty house that she realizes there's no reason she can't make her lie into a truth.

It is her birthday, after all.

-

The thing about it is that Rebecca has plausible deniability on her side.

Sure, she's the self-proclaimed Queen of I Just Happened To Be Here. She's told Nathaniel as much, which was probably a little too laissez-faire, but at the time she'd had very little conception or care for how her statement might've been turned back against her in the future. But this isn't like when she'd just happened to move to West Covina, or when Nathaniel had just happened to be running through her neighborhood, or, most significantly, when Nathaniel had just happened to show up at the same restaurant where she'd been having dinner with Josh and his parents. It's Rebecca's birthday, and she doesn't have any other plans, and an adult making a senior partner's salary can take herself out to a fancy restaurant in Pasadena if she wants to. As far as Nathaniel knows, she has no idea that he and Mona will also be here tonight. From his perspective, it could very well be an actual coincidence.

She briefly considers wearing an outlandish disguise, like a fancy feathered hat with a veil, before realizing that will draw attention rather than detract, so instead she just changes out of the burgundy dress she'd worn to work in favor of a fancier black number. She arrives at the restaurant 20 minutes before Nathaniel's 7pm reservation, and she tries to brush it off as a quirk when she refuses the first table the maitre d offers her, out in the open near the front door. "It's my birthday," she demures by way of explanation, slipping into a close cousin of her old timey voice and leaning in towards the definitely-an-out-of-work-actor conspiratorially, "and all my friends, of which there are many, wanted to throw me a fancy soiree, but I simply hate having a fuss made. If any of them happened to see me in here, celebrating myself by myself," she lowers her voice to a whisper, "there could be a _scene._ "

"I understand completely," the maitre d replies, sounding like he doesn't understand at all but has definitely had to put up with more bizarre requests in the past. He ushers her to a small table in a back corner, slightly elevated but not obvious, with a clear view of the rest of the restaurant floor.

"Perfect," she says, sliding a fifty dollar bill across the table with a wink.

She orders an entire bottle of expensive champagne and tucks herself away into the shadows as she looks at the menu without really seeing it, her periodic surreptitious glances towards the door increasing in frequency as the time inches closer to 7pm. With every second that passes she grows increasingly agitated, increasingly convinced that this was a terrible idea. Then, just before 7, she abruptly realizes that she doesn't actually want to be here, that she isn't even remotely prepared to see physical, tangible evidence of the person Nathaniel has replaced her with. She thinks about the time Nathaniel hired some skinny blonde girl to pretend to be his date just to make Rebecca jealous, and she wants desperately for this to somehow just be that on a grand scale, an elaborate ruse that Nathaniel concocted to keep the looming shadow of Rebecca's personality disorder at bay. The more she thinks about it, the more she wants it to be true, not only because it would instantly absolve her of all the guilt that's been metastasizing from the pit of her stomach, but because that would mean that somehow Nathaniel has understood her on a fundamental level that she hasn't even been able to decipher for herself.

She knows she's not that lucky. She's never been that lucky.

She's so mired in her own self-loathing that she almost misses the moment when Nathaniel walks through the door, seven minutes past the hour. It's strange, she thinks, because Nathaniel is usually punctual but maybe Mona isn't, and she hates thinking that she and Mona might have something in common. Hates thinking that maybe those similarities are part of why Nathaniel likes Mona. Hates thinking about any reason why Nathaniel might like Mona.

It's a relief, then, that she doesn't see Mona right away; she cranes her neck awkwardly so she can peer without being too obvious about it, but all she can see is Nathaniel, talking to the out-of-work-actor maitre d and then being led to a small candlelit table on the opposite side of the restaurant. He's wearing the same suit as he had been at the office, which she supposes makes sense; she hadn't had the chance to internalize the possible overlap between his work attire and his date attire in the two weeks that they'd properly dated, both because she hadn't been in the office at the time and because they'd basically never left the sex cocoon of Nathaniel's apartment. It's hard to tell in the romantic low light of the restaurant, but she thinks he might be wearing a different colored tie, and she can't even begin to contemplate any sort of hidden meaning behind that.

"Are you ready to order?" The perky, busty, also-definitely-an-out-of-work-actor server insinuates herself directly in Rebecca's line of sight; Rebecca tilts her whole body slightly to the left, trying to keep a bead on Nathaniel, and the server smartly sidesteps, blocking her view again, a pleasant smile plastered on her camera-ready face.

In truth, she hasn't read even one word of the menu despite the fact that she's been staring at it for nearly half an hour, which, she realizes belatedly, is probably why the server is being so deliberately aggravating. She scans the list and orders the entree with the highest price tag without really processing exactly what it is, just to get the server out of her way, but also because it's her birthday and she should treat herself. It takes entirely too long for the server to scribble Rebecca's selection down in her little notebook, and by the time she departs Nathaniel is sitting at his own table with his back to Rebecca, the chair opposite him obscured by the angle and the size of Nathaniel's body.

It doesn't matter, Rebecca thinks. She knows what Mona looks like, from Nathaniel's carefully curated social media posts and the significantly more candid ones that Rebecca has seen on Mona's feeds, the few times that she's felt self-destructive enough to click through. Ten minutes ago, she hadn't wanted to see Mona at all. The fact that Nathaniel is quite literally keeping Mona out of Rebecca's sight should come as a relief.

Rebecca sinks into her chair. Downs the rest of her glass of fancy champagne like she's throwing back a shot. Pours herself another glass.

She's not going to cry.

The meal that she ordered turns out to be an absolutely miniscule cut of steak, which cannot possibly be worth the price tag but dovetails conveniently with Rebecca's sudden desire to rip apart flesh with her teeth. She eats slowly, deliberately, trying not to stare at Nathaniel's back but finding her gaze magnetically drawn there, watching the way he fidgets with cuffs of his jacket. He looks ill at ease, she thinks, the line of his spine rigid against the back of his chair, and she wonders what he's thinking about, what he's talking about with Mona that might make him act this way.

She allows herself to hope, for one fleeting moment, that they're breaking up right in front of her. Happy birthday, Rebecca Bunch. You're getting everything you said you wanted.

Her plate is empty far more quickly than she intends, and she swirls the tines of her fork through the leftover sauce as she sips her fancy champagne and stares, unfocused, in the direction of Nathaniel's table. The perky server comes back and asks if Rebecca is interested in dessert, but despite the occasion all she can think about is the taste of Costco frosting and she finds herself declining, asking for the check instead. There's a pressure in her chest that she can't fully explain, anxiety or alcohol or some combination of the two, and suddenly it's of the utmost importance that she leave the restaurant and put as much physical space between herself and this terrible idea she had as soon as humanly possible. She hands over her credit card without even looking at the bill when the server brings it, forcing herself to choke back the remains of the champagne even as the bubbles burn her throat, the buzz of it simmering just beneath her skin. She staggers up from the table as soon as she's signed the receipt, regretting the heels she'd decided to wear, regretting the champagne, regretting that she decided to come here at all.

She doesn't mean to look at him on her way out of the restaurant. She doesn't. But it's the same impetus that keeps her coming back to the supply closet again and again, caught in his gravitational pull the second she slips into his orbit. So she doesn't mean to look but she does, her gaze flickering towards him, then away, then back again when she processes what she's just seen.

Nathaniel is alone, and the only plate on his table is his own.

Rebecca freezes, feeling like she's turned to ice, turned to stone. She doesn't feel anything, then feels everything all at once, like her body is racing to make up for the seconds she lost. She's already made so many terrible decisions tonight, and part of her doesn't want to add yet another to the list, but she feels as though she's not entirely in control of her faculties as she alters her trajectory and marches over to where Nathaniel is sitting.

There's no coat over the back of the chair opposite him, no purse nestled in the seat beside, no wine glass, not even a glass of water. He's been here alone this whole time and she didn't even notice.

"Hi," she says, accusatory, as though he's the one who deserves the blame.

The table shudders as his whole body jerks in response to her voice, knee slamming against the underside. "Jesus christ, Rebecca. What are you—"

She doesn't let him finish, instead grabbing his wrist on impulse and yanking him out of his chair, dragging him through the restaurant to the bathroom as he trails behind like a helpless animal. She's thankful at least that Nathaniel's expensive taste didn't quite reach bathroom-with-attendant levels as she slams the door behind them and locks it.

He snaps his arm free from her grip as soon as the door is closed. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"You know exactly what's wrong with me," she says, her voice edged with a laugh, a ghost of good humor that she doesn't feel. "There's several very informative books on the subject, with lists and everything. What the hell is wrong with _you?_ "

Nathaniel shakes out his arm, as though she could've possibly hurt him. "I was just having dinner, Rebecca."

"That's not what your calendar said," she blurts, venomous, before she can think any better of it.

"Oh, that's what we're doing, now?" Nathaniel says, eyes wide, disbelieving. "You're reading my calendar?"

Rebecca leans back against the door and crosses her arms over her chest. "Get over yourself. We work in the same office. The same room. You left your calendar open on your laptop and I saw it. It's not like I'm stalking you."

Nathaniel gestures at her, up and down the length of her body. "Stalking would track, is all I'm saying."

"Fuck you," she hisses.

"Fuck you!" he shouts back, like it's an invitation.

There's a version of how this night could go where she'd easily succumb to his taunt, grabbing him and shoving him back against the wall and climbing him like a tree, and her muscles are halfway to doing exactly that before her mind flashes the image of Nathaniel's calendar, with Mona's name clearly printed in 12 point font. "I thought you were on a date," she says, and it comes out strange and small and vaguely wounded.

"So you thought you'd just show up?" He snorts, rolls his eyes. "Classy, Rebecca."

"Oh, like you have any room to talk," she fires back, the indignation coming back just as quickly as it had receded. "You did the exact same thing on like, day two of knowing me."

She's not proud of the vindication she feels when the combination of hurt and embarrassment flashes across his face. It's easy to paint him as a hypocrite when their minds, their actions, their motivations have always been so similar, like a funhouse mirror reflecting them back at one another in a different size and shape. 

"So, what happened?" she asks, when it becomes clear that he's not about to offer up any sort of explanation on his own. "Mutual funds emergency? Trouble with her waspy family? Or did she finally cotton on to the fact that you've been fucking technically-your-boss on the side?"

"What the hell, Rebecca?"

"Is that what that text message was?" she goes on, tongue loosened by anger and alcohol. "Or did she let you come all the way down here before she canceled? Because I can't decide which one is sadder."

"It wasn't like that," Nathaniel blurts out before apparently thinking better of it. "I don't have to explain myself to you."

He's right, and she knows it, but she's lost all control of her voice now, her wounded fury congealing into words that spill from her mouth unchecked. "Of course not. When have you ever had to explain yourself to anyone? Clearly you scheduling a classy dinner date for today of all days was all a big coincidence, just like Raging Waters was a coincidence, because what other reason could you possibly have—" 

"Because I made the reservation for you!" he shouts. She's not sure when he got so close to her, that she can feel his hot breath on her face. "Back when we were..." His voice makes a clean break, all at once, and he whirls away from her, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Oh. _Oh._

God, she's so stupid.

She staggers away from the door, planting both palms against the edge of the counter and leaning over the sink, staring into the polished porcelain rather than meeting Nathaniel's eyes or her own in the mirror. Of course Nathaniel had found out when her birthday is; he'd started watching Seinfeld for her, for fuck's sake. She imagines the Nathaniel of a few months ago, pulling her information from the company directory and making the reservation because he had no reason to think they wouldn't still be together by then. It makes her chest hurt, thinking about how he'd been building the future of their relationship while she was systematically ripping it apart.

She doesn't look up, doesn't move, and her voice is so small when she finally breaks the silence. "You could have just... invited me anyway."

"You know I can't do that," Nathaniel says. He's quiet too, probably still facing away from her, but she doesn't want to look up and check. Doesn't know what she'll do if she looks at him right now. Doesn't trust herself, when it comes to him. "You know _why_ I can't do that."

She lifts one hand from the counter and presses it to the center of her chest as she swallows, as though that will somehow make this bitter knowledge go down more smoothly. The champagne is really hitting her now, making her feel strangely floaty, her brain filling with static. She wishes she'd eaten more, or drank less, or, ideally, not come here at all. When she finally lifts her head to look at herself in the mirror, her mascara is smudged beneath one eye. She's not crying now, has no recollection of crying, yet the evidence is right there on her face.

"I should go," she chokes out, turning towards the door, not looking at him. She takes the two steps between the sink and the door, her heels clacking sharply against the tile. "This was a mistake and I shouldn't have—"

Her right hand is on the lock when Nathaniel grabs hold of the wrist of her left, his other hand gripping her waist as he spins her around, presses her against the door, and kisses her.

She melts into it, overcome, her whole body feeling gelatinous. He must've ordered the same stupid tiny steak that she did because she can taste it on him, sharp and sweet in his mouth. He pins her wrist against the door and she flings her free arm around his neck, stretching up on her tiptoes to better close the gap. Five minutes ago she'd talked her body out of doing this and now she's doing it anyway, because the combination of him and her and small spaces has always caused a volatile chemical reaction with her admittedly fragile impulse control. His hand slides up from her waist to her chest, his thumb rubbing her nipple in insistent circles through the layers of fabric, and she can't help the desperate sound that bubbles from her throat and disappears into his mouth.

He breaks the kiss to trace a path down the column of her throat and she straddles his leg, presses against him insistently, grabs hold of his tie and pulls. Then her eyes flutter open when he drags his teeth over her skin and she sees that his tie, the one she had been so certain he'd changed for his date with Mona, is the same burgundy as the dress she'd been wearing earlier that day.

It's too much. Too sentimental, too sweet. She lets go of the tie and plants her palm in the center of his chest instead, pushing him back and away.

"I can't do this," Rebecca chokes out. She stares at the pristine white tile floor and tries to remember how to breathe normally. "I can't be in here, today, like this, with you, when you should've been here with—"

"Do you think I didn't try?" Nathaniel interrupts. There's an edge of desperation in his voice that makes Rebecca look at him, and her eyes widen when she sees how unguarded his expression is. How unravelled he is by this situation. How undone she's made him. "I meant to ask her, as soon as I swapped in her name on the calendar. But every time I tried, I'd get to the date and all I could think of was you."

"Oh," she says, for lack of anything better.

Nathaniel sighs and runs a hand through the crest of his hair. "You're right. This was a mistake." He doesn't look at her as he pushes past, fumbling for just a second with the lock before he opens the bathroom door and walks out without looking back.

It's pathetic, the impulse Rebecca feels to chase after him, screaming his name, so she forces herself to stand perfectly still, balling her hands into fists, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. Her own breathing is loud in her ears and shallow in her lungs. She counts out a full sixty seconds and still doesn't feel any better at the end of it, so she locks the door again and sits on the toilet, all her muscles trembling.

She wonders exactly how indecent it would be to get herself off in a restaurant bathroom.

-

Rebecca jolts awake on Saturday morning damp with sweat, legs wrapped tightly around her comforter, her whole body humming from a dream she can't remember. She had eventually decided against defiling a semi-public bathroom and had instead driven herself home when she probably shouldn't have and immediately passed out in bed. Now she feels every bit of arousal from the past few days like electricity in her veins, desperate for an outlet. Groaning, frustrated, she rolls over to fish a vibrator out of the drawer beside her bed when she notices her phone screen is lit up with a text message.

_Meet me at the office asap. Need to discuss the deed._

Her eyes catch and stick on the word "deed." Does he mean the double entendre? She certainly would have. Or is she just reading too much into it, like she reads too much into everything, analyzing and microanalyzing until she doesn't know where the reality stops and her own interpretations begin?

She can't keep doing this with him. Not after last night. Sex is one thing but feelings are another, and it's only a matter of time before the two are inextricably linked. She knows this from experience.

So she grabs the vibrator and flops back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and letting her eyes unfocus. It would be so much safer, so much easier, to keep her fantasies general, uncontaminated by Nathaniel, but her brain turns traitor immediately, and she thinks about walking into their office, closing the door behind her and crawling into Nathaniel's lap. Thinks about the leftover sheet cake in the office fridge, and how she could smear the frosting across Nathaniel's lips and lick it off. Thinks about all the things she wanted to do to Nathaniel in that fancy bathroom, the things he nearly offered and the things she imagined after he left, the things she probably dreamed about last night.

She presses the switch on her vibrator, and it shudders once in her hand and promptly dies.

Incredible. What a way to start the weekend.

To hell with it.

Rebecca throws the vibrator back into the drawer, grabs her phone, and types _Would love to discuss some deeds with you. Be there in fifteen._ followed by three paper clip emoji.

By the time Nathaniel has her splayed across his desk, coaxed into licking Costco frosting off the inside of her thighs, she's forgotten all about feeling guilty.


End file.
